Dr. Joshua M. Kapfer – Wildlife Biologist

Dr. Joshua M. Kapfer, Associate Professor, Department of Biological Sciences, UW-Whitewater. Dr. Kapfer is a Certified Wildlife Biologist who grew up with a love for wildlife, especially herptiles. He attended UW-La Crosse where he received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in biology. His master’s research involved the survival of northern leopard frog larvae in and around agricultural ponds. Josh then went on to receive his Ph. D. from UW-Milwaukee where he intensively studied the life history of Gophersnakes, a species of greatest conservation need and Wisconsin’s largest constricting snake. Dr. Kapfer has been working since 2009 as an assistant professor, for two years at Elon University in North Carolina (where he studied the ecology of Eastern Box Turtles) and is currently at UW-Whitewater where he is developing several undergraduate research projects on herptiles and mammals. In his young career, Josh is already widely published on a variety of subjects and is currently conducting several research projects, while preparing to start a long-term study on Blanding’s Turtles. The goal of much of his research is to provide conservation specialists with key information to guide the conservation, management and recovery of rare species.